


Time for Some Superhero Theater!

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Crime Fighting, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Healing, Light Angst, M/M, Performing Skits, Remnants of Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Team Bonding, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-15 01:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18488122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Shuichi Saihara is part of a superhero team, serving Chance City no matter how many despairing forces rise up against it.  Which is...  A lot.  A lot of forces, all the time, and everybody’s getting pretty worn out.The Gamblers’ unofficial shadow leader wants to help with this. It seems Kokichi Oma‘s latest team-building idea involves skits.





	1. First, We Gotta Meet Everybody

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!!! I hope you enjoy this fic, if you read it. :D!!! 
> 
> For a little backstory: a while back, I told a very kind person in the comments of a different fic that I would hopefully write another thing featuring both Saiouma and theater pretty soon. So! Superhero theater!!! It's a little non-traditional and the actual theater-ish bits come later, but... >:D Hopefully this counts. It's really fun to write, I'll tell you that!
> 
> Thank you for reading!!!

Technically — officially, on all the triple-stamped Superhero Alliance paperwork — Shuichi’s childhood friend Kaede Akamatsu was the leader of their team.  The whole thing had been her idea, after all, and she was great with the press.  Nobody’d found a smudge on Kaede’s personal record yet, and she sometimes did piano performances in costume for charity.

She was called “Sonata,” on all those official papers, too, Kaede.  Her music could alter people’s emotions if she kept it going long enough, after all, stirring them up to fight or draining all the anger out of them until they were just a blubbering bundle of apologies in a supervillain costume.  She wore hearts on her snappy black uniform, just the same way Kaito wore diamonds, Maki wore spades and Shuichi himself wore clubs on his sleeves and along the back of his coat. Just the same way the guy who spent most of his time scrambling around behind the scenes to keep everything going smoothly and generally prevent anybody from blowing themselves up wore a Joker card insignia with a certain amount of pride.

 _His_  name was Kokichi Oma, or “Wildcard” to the people who would’ve loved to smear them all into sticky paste on the streets of Chance City.  The more Shuichi thought about it, the more he realized Kokichi had become essentially the shadow leader of their team...  Even if he’d probably croon something like, “Well  _damn_ , Shuichi!  I had no idea you thought I was such a manipulative asshole!” if an idea like that were ever honestly suggested.  But then maybe he’d blow a kiss, or nudge Shuichi in the ribs as he breezed by.  Acknowledging the inside joke.  His hair would smell like grape soda, and his eyes would keep flicking back to Shuichi’s face discreetly until he smiled.

Shuichi had ended up with a ton of inside jokes with Wildcard — he didn’t know what to make of it, some days, except that he could feel his heart fall into a sprint when Kokichi grinned all impishly at him from behind his harlequin-print domino mask.  Shuichi’s own mask had grey and black stripes on it, the way his coat had when he was still running around as a detective.  Before Kaede’d recruited him.

Maybe Shuichi was mostly just nervous because the team was using Kokichi’s vast and incredibly shady fortune for so many of their operations, nowadays?  That was the only way Kaito would’ve let Kokichi design their, as he said, “rebooted” costumes; that was possibly the only way the others would’ve let him on the team at all.

It wasn’t too long ago they’d been chasing Kokichi through Chance City’s colder, slimier alleys, after all.  Trying to piece together what sort of messages he was sending with his over-the-top thefts.  Trying to get Kokichi’s ringing laughter out of their heads.

Or... You know, maybe that last part only really applied to Shuichi?  Mm. Nevermind.  Kaito Momota — (or as their files called him the “Luminary of the Stars,” even if their team pretty much just went with “Luminary” except when it looked like he needed a pick-me-up) — had asked a few times why Shuichi didn’t really seem  _angry_  when Wildcard pulled his tricks, back then.  Shuichi hadn’t been able to think of anything to say, so Kaito’d ended up clapping him on the shoulder, maybe shaking his head or going “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

Kokichi’s name wasn’t on any of the official paperwork, though.  That’s what mattered.  The Superhero Alliance might have pardoned him temporarily — might’ve called him “brave” even, and “reckless in the kind of way that saves lives” — but sometimes Shuichi had to remind himself he didn’t know Kokichi the way he knew the rest of his teammates.

Kaede, Kaito, Maki and Shuichi.  Sonata, Luminary, Lady Death and the Detective...  The Detective, who was always so sure this was finally the mission where he’d pick a name that meant something more to him but he never, ever did.  Not that Kokichi had any shortage of nicknames for Shuichi, mind you.  Most of  _those_  wouldn’t have really felt like they belonged in a newspaper headline.

...

_Here’s the setting —_

_A satellite base in orbit above Chance City, where Kokichi Oma has recently instituted Fancy Pancake Dinner Nights.  The ceiling is always full of stars, and Kaito has a variety of labs where he works on the suit his grandmother started imbuing with alien powers long ago.  Kaito is sure he’s some sort of alien prince, after all — why else would his grandparents have found him in a smoldering crater, sealed in a space pod and with golden electronic bangles around his neck and wrists that have never come off?  Those bangle-things glow when Kaito gets worked up, which is nearly all the time._

_Maki Harukawa has a much more secret room all to herself on that satellite, stocked full of weapons from throughout the ages.  Right now, two members of the team are dueling with ancient swords that are really supposed to be resting by what used to be part of a cave wall...  What used to be Lady Death’s tomb, where she’d waited a long, long time in stasis._

_Those sword-fighters are about to get caught, though Luminary will get away with it almost scot-free.  Wildcard will pretend something like this could be enough to make him cry._

_Here’s the situation —_

_In a few minutes, Shuichi Saihara...  The Detective...  Is going to stop watching the duel and spin around in his glowy space-chair.  He is going to consider the screens in front of him — he’ll still be smirking, imagining the way Kokichi’s hair fell into his face as he went “Oh geez!” and ducked behind a leathery white couch with seatbelts on it in case of an emergency landing.  He’ll be thinking just a little about the way he’d seen Kokichi sabotage other crooks’ schemes, way back when, even on the other side of the law.  Kokichi offering up some guilty jazz hands and chirping, “Oops!  My bad!” in quite the same voice._

_Then, Shuichi’s smile will drain.  He’ll see the videos of the theater burning, down in Chance City below.  He’ll see the half-dead crawling from the wreckage, swimming with a dizzy underwater light...  The Light of Hope, as people were calling it.  Some more civilians released through despair to the hope of life eternal, without pain, without anything left to surrender to.  The man whose power did this sort of thing thought it was a kindness.  He’d been hurt so badly it was hard to think anything else. He had been dead and reborn through a twisted hope too, for a long, long time._

_Shuichi will shudder.  Sigh.  It’d seemed like Nagito Komaeda...  The Warrior of Hope... Had been doing so much better, lately._

_“Kaede?  We have a situation,” Shuichi will say into the comms.  And then Kaede will rally the team.  She’ll make a fist in the air and remind them all of their promises to safety and justice, promises to care for everyone they can, alive, dead, or in the fragile, false-hope place between.  Maki will scold Kaito — but gently, trying not to laugh.  Kokichi will wail that she’s just so, so unfair, and he won’t even make pancakes for her, now, will he?_

_But of course he will, the very first chance he gets._

_Later, part of Shuichi will wonder if Kokichi Oma played up his wounded feelings on the way down to Chance City to distract everyone.  Keep them from reliving all the nasty memories of fighting Mr. Komaeda last time.  The man is undead; he will tear himself apart again and again for his Hope, if he thinks he has to. Shuichi will decide that Kokichi probably did scrounge up a distraction on purpose, the way any shadow leader might work from between the lines._

_And then, they will try to save whoever they can.  It’s never enough._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I think the Superhero Alliance here was formed originally between Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya... This universe's original Big Three, pffft.


	2. Insert an Action Sequence Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to chapter 2!!!! I hope you enjoy it. :) also.... As a note, some Remnants of Despair stuff is meant to be going on here. Hopefully it came out okay!!!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!

Shuichi liked it in Kaito’s earthbound ship so much more than he liked the one meant for deep space.  Maybe that was because it’d been around longer and wasn’t basically a huge computer people climbed into; maybe it was that Kaito’d decorated the insides in ways his grandparents would have liked.  Plush burgundy seats, drink holders, even a couple family pictures stuck to the dashboard.  Photos of Maki, too, both from around when she’d first lifted herself out of the earth and now, when she wore her hair in pigtails and let Kaito take her picture playing charades at the Superhero Alliance holiday party.  There were also a few pictures of the whole team, of course —  Kokichi was in all of them, after photoshopping himself into some from even before he’d gotten to Chance City.  Kaito hadn’t noticed yet.

They arrived at the burning theater as a unit, this time.  Shuichi thought that was a touch more professional than the times Kokichi’d run up panting a while into the mission, generally after Kaito banished him from the ship for some reason or another.  Last time it was for messing with said ship’s speed settings...  Another time it was for crank-calling Kaito’s grandmother.  Either way, they all climbed out together, now, and Kaito sealed up the ship with a cheerful chirp from his keys.  Those seals would bind anyone who tried to hijack their ride home in a temporary prison of some kind — probably shaped out of the same raging gold light Kaito’d gotten his name from.  The Luminary’s personal key ring had a lot of handy features like that, but it  _also_  had a little clown-face dangling charm Wildcard had stuck there that he hadn’t been able to pry off just yet.

The theater was a smoking husk, flames still gnawing away deep in its heart, in the dressing rooms, in the hallways.  Firefighters could only get so close without meeting the half-dead, after all, or becoming some themselves.  The stone columns outside the theater were dark with ash, and one of them had splintered nearly straight through the middle, crashing down on a cop car.  It sat at an odd, impossibly unlucky angle, but that was par for the course dealing with the Warrior of Hope. There was blood on the pavement, both splattered hardening living blood and the thick-tar blood of the Hopeful.  The half-dead.

Shuichi had dealt with Nagito Komaeda before, but he’d also sat with Nagito and his boyfriend Hajime Hinata in the hospital afterwards, on what Hajime called a “Good Day.”  There had been so many more Good Days even just this last year, Shuichi knew.  He had almost believed he wouldn’t see the shivering dead light of Nagito’s power again, at least not for a long time.

Nagito was somewhere between life and death — something like formaldehyde had been dripping from an IV into his arm when Shuichi sat with them, and he’d watched recordings of what he had done with wide, rigor mortis-twitching eyes.  Nagito’d lost one of his hands during his fall back into despair, that time, and Hajime held his boyfriend’s newly-stitched-on fingers very tightly.

Nagito had wiped a couple tears off his cheek, seeing what he’d done.  Sticky grey tears, the way the dead cried.  He still said it was wonderful how everyone rose up together after so much pain and destruction.  He still said everything he’d done had led to a kind of hope in the end, thanks to heroes like Shuichi.  And people the Warrior of Hope changed would never have to experience the same hurt as the living, too…  Didn’t Shuichi know that?

But Nagito’d also answered all Shuichi’s questions, and his tips about the Chance City crime scene led the Detective to some valuable leads.  “Anything for the right side, after all,” Nagito had told him.  Anything for true hope, which must always prevail when all is said and done.

Aw, well.  This wasn’t a Good Day.  Something must have happened...  Though Shuichi couldn’t say exactly  _what_ , yet.  Something must have taken Nagito Komaeda back to his own laughing, hopeful version of despair.

“It’s the Gamblers!” someone in the crowd called, now.  She was part of a cluster of civilians trapped between the ragged, soot-smeared pieces of an enormous glass fountain and the smoking theater wall.  The fountain-glass was smeary with blood, its pieces clutching little bits of fabric from where people had tried climbing through.  This woman was someone who’d opted to be there, originally; she had a microphone, and was clutching it tight even now that the thing was pretty much shattered.  Still reporting, with no one to listen on the other side.

“Why the hell did we agree to that name?” Maki murmured to Shuichi, the ghost of a smile teasing at her lips.  Lady Death’s domino mask was all silky black, except for a tiny skull just under each of her eyes.  Her lips were painted grey — or maybe she only pretended it was paint.  Maki had been shocked, when Luminary first vouched for her at the Superhero Alliance...  When he’d promised that he would forfeit his membership right away if she turned out not to be trustworthy.  Lady Death had been raised as a living weapon, everyone knew, preserved dreaming in an old, old queen’s tomb in case she needed her services in the afterlife.  There had been a couple documentaries made about her, before she woke up.

Maki’s ancient queen had never needed her services — at least not yet — but plenty of the people of Chance City looked beyond relieved to see them there.  Someone screamed, “Save us, goddammit!” and someone else tried, “Wildcard!  Can I get your autograph when you’re all done here?”  Kokichi winked, at that.  Waved all cheekily.

Kokichi winked for the team’s brand, sure, but Shuichi wasn’t convinced he wanted to waste even a second.  Kokichi was bouncing on the balls of his softly curled jester shoes, already, holding one of his infamous jawbreakers.  Or, you know, it  _looked_  like a candy — they came in all sorts of glossy plastic patterns — but the minute Kokichi threw it the thing would burst apart into color and smoke and poison.  Poison to paralyze, poison to consume a person with laughter; soporifics, hallucinogens, the whole deal.  Shuichi had thought maybe the jawbreakers would be color coded, at first, but nah — that would’ve made Kokichi far easier to predict than he’d ever want to be.

“Detective, you and I are gonna get these people out of here, okay?” Kaede announced, hands on her hips.  “You deal with everyone in the street — I’ll round up anybody still in the theater.  Then you’re flying them out of here. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” Shuichi said.  Kaito tossed him his keys.

“Luminary, I need you to deal with the Hopeful —”

“Trap ‘em in space light jail?  Easy!  You got it!”  Kaito was in the air in a second, the golden glow of him sparking all around, sharp like ozone.  It all might’ve sounded “easy” now, but Shuichi knew Kaito would be worn to a thread if he had to be the one to meet with these people’s families later...  Explaining what it meant to be newly half-dead.  He was grinning and swaggering around at the moment, but Kaito’d look like a crackled-out lightbulb by the time those family-meeting sessions were done.

As Shuichi was clicking on the voice amplifier in his mask — as he began calling for everyone to  _stand back_ so he could clear away the splintered glass fountain and people could climb free — he heard Kokichi say, “That means you’re stuck with  _me_  again, Miss Murder!  Let’s go find our old friend Nagito!”

“That’s not my name,” said Maki, and Kokichi laughed something like, “Yeah, yeah — Matron Massacre, right?  I’m just so darn forgetful, I guess!”  They had a good tag-team thing going, those two, no matter how they might bicker.  Kokichi would go strolling right up to someone monologuing cheerfully while Maki shot an arrow into them from a perch somewhere above, maybe.  Or maybe Maki would be sword-fighting someone — actually sword-fighting, this time, with training — and Kokichi would jump on the person she was sparring from behind and shove a jawbreaker in their mouth.  Boom.  But like... A  _non-lethal_ “boom.”  Kokichi’s fighting style generally involved a lot of ducking away and somersaulting under things.  Maki moved like she was made of smoke, just as airy-fast and twice as cold.

Shaking civilians clung to Shuichi’s sleeves until he could hand them off to the ambulance workers just beyond the edge of the Warrior of Hope’s watery undeath radius — he offered towels to strangers wearing bits of stringy blood in their hair, and let them lean on him as they climbed into the back of ambulances.  He heard Sonata’s song uncoiling behind him, coaxing whoever heard it down whatever safe-ish routes she’d mapped out and into the open air.   Singing bravery and relief, perseverance and the truth that they would not have to be afraid forever.

That sort of song wouldn’t work on the almost-dead, mind you.  The Hopeful were beyond music, just as they were beyond death and pain and aging.  Just as they would tear the theater and themselves to so many singed pieces if left unchecked.

Sometimes Shuichi heard explosions — possibly Kaito’s power suit, possibly supercharged jawbreakers, possibly the Warrior of Hope’s penchant for homemade bombs.  Sometimes he thought he heard Kokichi’s frantic and furious laughter through everything, too, though that might have been a trick of his mind.

…

_Here’s how everything went —_

_Decently, all things considered, though there’d been so many strangers burned before anyone even knew despair had come to find Nagito Komaeda again.  So many new lives caught between waking and death that will have to be dragged back to sticky-eyed shadows of themselves over weeks and weeks in the hospital...  So many righteously angry people who will keep working to put the Warrior of Hope away for all time._

_But Mr. Komaeda isn’t the root of the problem, and everyone knows it. There’s something endlessly rotten waiting in Chance City — heroes have been struggling to chase it down for years and years before Kaede Akamatsu and her team were even born._

_This is the same well of despair that drove the Chef to put such wicked, desperate drugs in his food, once upon a time, bringing whole restaurants... Whole city blocks... To frenzied murder.  Eyes stabbed out with salad forks. Boiling grease tipped off of roofs with vegetables still floating around inside it.  This is the same well of despair that got a famed animal breeder — the Demon Prince, as he came to call himself, soon enough — to send his beloved tigers and elephants, pythons and hamsters and so many more out into the streets to snap bone and leave the gutters stopped up with human meat._

_That despair has sunken in so deep.  It belongs to all Chance City, and if the Gamblers can’t keep it back, when the time comes…  Can’t find its festering source…  Maybe someday it will belong to the whole bleeding world._

_But for now, all they can do is pick up that night’s pieces.  They can get Nagito Komaeda back to someone who loves him, loves him even when that means sitting with him while he’s chained to a bed and letting words about dark hope spill out of his mouth like a noxious oil.  They can see that splintered bones find their way into casts, and possibly sign some of those casts with an extra flourish...  Kokichi’ll do that, definitely, and probably Kaito too, even if “Luminary of the Stars” does take up a lot of space._

_They’ll pour some of Kokichi’s enormous, unknowable fortune into strangers’ hospital bills.  They’ll watch a “Greatest Hits” news report about Maki, Kokichi and Kaito’s fighting strategies this time around, mostly because the news station in question will want to record their reactions for another broadcast when morning finally comes._

_“It’s been an honor to serve you,” Kaede Akamatsu will tell everyone. “It’s always an honor to serve you.”_

_The Detective will take notes in his crisp black book, the one with a clubs insignia on the front to match the ones on his uniform.  He is hunting the despair waiting in Chance City, and after tonight he will have come just a bit closer._

_Here’s what will happen when they get back home —_

_Kaito will sling an arm around Shuichi’s shoulders and say, “You look wiped out, sidekick!  Better get some rest, huh?”  He’ll be fiddling with the sparking golden bangles at his neck, at his wrists.  His skin will look slightly burned all around them, stinging and angry red.  Kaito acts like he knows the bangles are meant to claim him, meant to remind him of some sort of glorious destiny beyond the pull of their galaxy, but every now and then Shuichi wonders why something like that would be set to burn him if he uses his powers too much._

_Shuichi knows Kaito won’t want to talk about it, but he also knows Maki keeps a lot of burn cream in a cabinet at the back of her secret weapons room for nights just like this.  She will set a case of that cream outside Kaito’s door before she goes to bed.  Kokichi likes to say it’s sort of like leaving food for stray cats, but really he wishes he’d thought up the idea._

_Kaede will play on the satellite base’s enormous, crystalline piano, watching earth spin on beneath them until she calms down enough to get a few hours of sleep before her morning patrol...  Shuichi will protest when Kokichi offers to take his shift guarding the station’s phones, staring at all those shifting Chance City screens.  He’ll eventually give in._

_“I’ll be up going over my notes anyway,” Shuichi will say. “You’re all covered in jawbreaker smoke powder.  Don’t you want to take a shower?”_

_Kokichi will wipe some pink-orange jawbreaker stuff off his cheek and smear it down Shuichi’s sleeve, his eyes melty and soft in a way Shuichi is learning to trust more and more all the time. He’ll think just a little about how Kokichi had always wanted to mess with him personally during every heist, back in the day.  Stealing his weapons only to leave them tied up with little ribbons back at the police station; pulling pranks conveniently at symposiums where Shuichi had wanted the speaker’s autograph._

_“Get outta here, Mr. Detective!  My turn on the monitors — go on, git!” Kokichi will say.  When Shuichi wakes up, the whole living room area of their base will have been transformed into a miniature stage, with spangly curtains and a pile of scripts prepared in Kokichi’s scribbly handwriting and bound with shiny silver paper._

_If Kaito had been the first one to find that stage, he might have muttered something about “That damn Wildcard.  A theater?  Too soon — some real bad taste.”  But as it is, Shuichi smiles a little, and he watches the curtain shift in the AC breeze, catching blue-green in the computer light.  He picks up the script with his clubs insignia on the front and begins to read._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: the year Kokichi semi-officially joined this team marked the first time any of these guys actually won the Superhero Alliance’s holiday party charades competition. Kaito was... As they say... Over the moon. Several people have demanded a rematch for next year. 
> 
> Also, "Miss Murder" is a song by AFI... I can oh-so-clearly imagine Kokichi changing the lyrics a bit and messing with her occasionally? Idk. Maybe.
> 
> Thanks again!!! Have a wonderful day~


	3. Okay — There!  Superhero Theater!  Told Ya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... Ta-da!!! Chapter 3. :D I really appreciate you giving this fic a try... Thanks for reading all the way to the end~

Shuichi finished nearly the whole crinkly-paper script book Kokichi had left for him by the time his teammates stumbled out into the base’s main area.  He’d ran his hands very gently over the pages, turning them.  He’d raised his eyebrows at some bits, and snorted laughter sometimes, too.  Kokichi had some interesting opinions about him.  Shuichi wasn’t sure he should believe  _all_  of this, though – how many times could someone like Wildcard call him “amazing” and “noble” before it became sarcastic?

Unless it was sarcastic the  _whole time_ , really.  Shuichi mostly worked behind the scenes of their missions, after all.  He was the one who read back through decades’ worth of old newspapers to narrow down which unnamed graves might’ve had a villain’s secret weapons stash in them...  He was the one who slipped away every couple weeks to give the Superhero Alliance a concise and carefully typed-up report, generally without illustrations (Wildcard) or enthusiastic tangents (Luminary.)  The Alliance said Shuichi’s straight-to-the-point approach was “Reasonably Appreciated.”

The book Kokichi had made was full of little skits, with roles for all Shuichi’s teammates to play around him.  Shuichi was written like a gentle, earnest detective in so many of them…  But a mastermind taking on the world, in others.  Gathering up his strength, his logic, to rip down empires.  They were pretty short skits, all things considered, more along the lines of vaudeville shows than anything else.  There were even bits written in reminding the audience to boo and hiss, or cheer and stamp their feet, or go  _“Awwwwww”_  in dramatic, sing-song voices.  Shuichi’d never been to a vaudeville-style show, though it made sense Kokichi would like that sort of thing.  _He_ was known to boo and hiss during regular team meetings, even.  And didn’t vaudeville shows sometimes involve those greased-up, twirly mustaches, too?  Kokichi’d worn one of those on a few separate missions of theirs, now that Shuichi thought about it, and he’d glued one to Luminary’s face when he fell asleep at the observation desk.

In one of the skits, Shuichi’s character wasn’t sure who to trust on his team.  He could barely even trust his own reason, his abilities.  He wasn’t sure why Kaede was still keeping him around, anyway…  Whether he was just there because she felt bad for him.   _That_  was the skit where Shuichi monologued about feeling useless even while carefully, selflessly taking on everybody’s jobs around him – helping Kaito fight a monster made out of an enormous paper pile, for instance, which Maki was supposed to play.  It was also the skit where Kokichi’s character kept insisting _, “But you’re amazing!  I think about you all the time!”_ and Shuichi relentlessly insisted on hearing him wrong.

 _“But I’m annoying?  You don’t think I should have gotten involved?”_ Shuichi’s character would say, and the audience was supposed to offer up a “Super Exasperated Sigh.”

In another of the skits, Shuichi’s character was leading them all out of actual hell.  He’d deduced the way out; he’d outwitted the devil himself.  Kaito was supposed to play the devil, in that one, wearing a pair of sparkly demon horns Kokichi had included taped to the page. That was probably just Kokichi’s attempt to make a little joke, to get certain people yelling and throwing their scripts at him for a while.  Lighten the mood.

It was a strange and thoughtful gift, maybe.  It was the sort of thing a shadow leader might do for his own mysterious purposes, carrying the rest of the team along with him until they figured out what it all meant.  Shuichi noticed early on that Kokichi didn’t have a script book of his own.  Just a lot of roles to play in other people’s script books, always teasing or trying to make a point.

“What the hell is this?” Kaito laughed, heading over to the stage, eventually.  He was holding about half a pot of coffee he’d been drinking from straight, with just a splash of Kokichi’s sugary creamer stirred in.  Normally Kaito went for green tea — ah, he was tired, this morning, wasn’t he?  He’d been smearing burn ointment onto his wrists and neck, too, recently, but it still looked like his skin must hurt.  Kaito’s bangles were crackling, even now.  “You set up a stage or something, sidekick?  What’s even – oh.  Wait.  This was  _Wildcard_ , huh?”

Kaito scooped up his own book and started flipping through it, taking long slurps of coffee.  Frowning.  Kaede came out of her bedroom soon enough, with a few pages of just-written sheet music folded up in the pocket of her pajama pants.  She usually put comfortable clothes back on, just after an early-morning patrol.  Maki’s hair was braided down her back, when she appeared, and she was the only super assassin Shuichi knew with such an extensive collection of cute socks.  Kaito had slipped a cup of coffee to her earlier, apparently, with whipped cream and dark red sprinkles.  He didn’t like to say “Thank You” directly for the burn cream Maki left him, but Shuichi thought he tried to show it in little ways.

Kokichi dropped down in the middle of the group last of everyone.  He’d been somewhere up near the space station’s windows, again.  Leaving fingerprints between the stars.  He had half a blue raspberry Pop-Tart in his hand.

“I see you guys found my stage!  Nice, huh?” Kokichi said.  “Feels like about time I clued you in on some of my backstory.  You can add it to my old villain file!”

“Did you…   _Mean_  this stuff, Kokichi?” Shuichi asked, gesturing to his own script book.  He knew he wouldn’t completely let himself trust whatever Kokichi said next, and he also knew – was beginning to know – that wasn’t fair.  How many times had Wildcard been the last one to leave a fight, sticking around to make sure all his teammates got out okay?  How many times had Kokichi let Shuichi sleep through his shifts, by now?

But Kokichi didn’t say anything.  He just smiled, waggling his eyebrows a little.  He cleared his throat dramatically and hopped up on the stage himself, still holding his Pop-Tart.

“I  _could_  tell you I was raised underneath a gigantic theater like the Phantom of the Opera,” he started.  “Or I could tell you I grew up with a circus, one part of a family acrobat team – the Flying Omas!”

“You’re not an acrobat,” Maki said.  “ _Gymnast_ , sure.  But not acrobat – we wouldn’t believe you.”

“And you’d be right not to!  I am a liar, after all,” said Wildcard.  The notorious sometime-villain, the possible shadow leader of their team.  He didn’t even miss a beat.  It was like he’d been expecting her answer, like his routine wouldn’t have been complete without it.  “But isn’t it enough to say I grew up building sets?  Writing acts, maybe.  Putting on a show?”

“Sure,” said Shuichi.  He thought Kokichi might’ve shot him a thankful glance for the vote of confidence...  But maybe not.  Kokichi was in the middle of putting on a show right that second, wasn’t he?

“And let’s say I grew up with a team, too,” Kokichi continued.  “A team kinda like this one, even, only we had a dice thing going instead of cards.  Close enough, though, I’d say.  Maybe I lost them; maybe they haven’t been born yet.  But you wouldn’t be dumb enough to believe I’m from the  _future_ , right?”

“Right,” said Kaito.  He tipped his pot of coffee towards Kokichi like a halfhearted toast.

Kokichi tipped his Pop-Tart back to Kaito, nodding very formally.  Cheers.  “And maybe…  I don’t know.  Maybe my superpower is I can tell when my team’s been fighting for too many people they’re beginning to think they can’t save.  Maybe I can tell when my team’s wondering if people like Nagito Komaeda’ll ever be free from despair for good.  If Chance City can ever be okay, like other places are.”

The silence stretching out after that said enough, then.  Of course they hadn’t gotten all the burning smells out of their hair, after the night before – of course the Hopeful’s half-voices still turned up in their dreams sometimes.  Kaede had leaned against the wall outside Mr. Komaeda’s hospital room for a second before going in to talk with the authorities.  With the Warrior of Hope’s boyfriend.  She had taken a deep, exhausted breath, and then conjured a smile out of the air.  Switched on a light inside herself the same way she might burst into song.

“I think it’s time for a little Superhero Theater,” Kokichi said.  “You’ve all got your scripts, courtesy of yours truly!  Why don’t we work some of this out?  Team building – am I right, O fearless leader?”

Kaede studied her script thoughtfully, and then looked up at Kokichi’s bright, false-innocent smile.  She said, “I want to start with this sketch – the one where I never even formed a superhero team – first.”

…

_Here’s how Wildcard’s Superhero Theater session goes –_

_Surprisingly well, with more participation that Kokichi’d honestly let himself expect.  At first the plan is to act out only a handful of his scripts – one from each of the books – and then put on their real-life clothes.  Their costumes, their roles, their day-to-day battles.  But that isn’t what happens.  Not yet._

_By the end of things, the only skit they haven’t done is the one where Kaito finds out he’s actually an exiled space criminal, wearing bangles that keep his powers mostly sealed away so he can’t use them for what he used to.  Walking around in an aged-down skin, with plenty of memories drained from his head…  Plenty of life lived out among the stars that definitely wasn’t the stuff of hero stories.  Kaito doesn’t even want to read that script all the way to the end, which Kokichi thinks is a bit of a pity.  He might have appreciated some of the ending parts – one of the stage directions could have involved a possible kiss on the cheek, wink-wink.  Kaito’s friends don’t shove him away because of what he used to be, or what he isn’t.  They keep him around for what he is.  But Kaito doesn’t read that far, so…  His loss, Kokichi tells himself._

_“Sick imagination there, Wildcard,” Kaito says, scoffing at that particular script, and Kokichi says, “Ha – you know me!”_

_By the time all their script books are tucked away in everybody’s various living quarters…  (No, none of them end up thrown away, which would have made Wildcard smirk softly to himself if he could’ve known it…)  Lady Death will have dressed like a monster made out of boring paperwork, chasing Kaito and Shuichi around the stage.  Kaede will have acted out being a famous and beloved concert musician, only watching theaters burn down and the Hopeful flood Chance City’s streets on television._

_Maybe they’ll all know a little more about why they’re fighting, then.  About how Maki feels, starting each day knowing she’ll almost definitely put somebody in a choke-hold before she gets to sleep…  And how each night she goes to bed knowing she might wake up again after another hundred years have passed, just in a new tomb, now.  Lady Death, living on past everyone she knows.  Again.  Drifting.  Preserved for an ancient queen that will possibly never stir again._

_How Shuichi feels._

_How Kaito feels._

_How Kaede feels._

_And, considering he wrote all of this nonsense, they’ll have to know a little more about how Kokichi feels for his team, too, right?_

_Welp.  A guy can only hope._

_Here’s what happens when they finish up with Kokichi’s scripts, for now –_

_Shuichi pulls him aside and says, “Thank you,” first off.  His smile is uncertain and shy, but his eyes are resolute.  Those are the sort of eyes Kokichi has never regretted trusting with his life, he thinks, and then he shakes that idea out of his head.  Shuichi might not see himself as the backbone of their team, yet – as the heart – but it’s Kokichi’s job to show him, little by little._

_It’s Kokichi’s job to say, “Of course I meant every word!  What am I, some kinda liar?” and snicker before dashing away._

_Kaito’s turn behind the observation desk comes next, and he spends most of it just fiddling around with one of his smaller telescopes.  Staring out into the stars above them all, wanting something he doesn’t know how to name._

_But then an alert comes up on the screens in front of him, and Kaito sputters.  Nearly drops the telescope, too.  He swivels around in that glowy space chair, just as Shuichi had the day before, and groans down at the reports, the video footage…  Groans down at an ominous chalk outline on some familiar Chance City street._

_“Kaede!” Kaito calls into the comms.  “It’s that guy – uh – that Shinguji guy.  Kills nice ladies for his dead sister?  Looks like he’s back in town.”  The images on the screen in front of Kaito are gory and tenderly splattered, almost ritualistic.  The air down there must smell like incense and melted candle wax.  There will be a ghostly sheen to that patch of pavement for weeks to come.  Early on, Kaito had felt super ill during every mission involving Korekiyo Shinguji because of that same ghostly business.  Because of the spirits that follow Mr. Shinguji around everywhere, grabbing at the edges of his long, silky hair.  He isn’t so afraid, now – not afraid enough to almost throw up in the ship down to Chance City, probably, or invent reasons to maybe sit this one out that don’t involve him panicking – though he does wince.  He jerks his eyes forcefully away from the screens.  Luminary begins summoning some of his burning golden power back all around him, preemptively, even if he’ll need more burn ointment before the day is done._

_It’s time to go again, now, just as soon as everybody grabs their uniform coats.  Maki’ll need her swords, strapped across her back like cruel dragonfly wings.  Shuichi will need his small black notebook with the clubs insignia on the front.  Kaede will rally up the troops, again, and Kokichi will call shotgun for the spaceship ride down to the city that’s probably already waiting for them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: Shuichi attempted to write a script book for Kokichi as a thank you some time after this, but he got really embarrassed a couple lines in. 
> 
> Thank you again!!! I hope you have a wonderful day. :)


End file.
